


i'll be dead before the day is done

by opensoulsurgery



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Angst, Gen, Medication, the bleeding effect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 18:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensoulsurgery/pseuds/opensoulsurgery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the hallucinations were better than the antipsychotics they were shoving down his throat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'll be dead before the day is done

It started out innocently enough; infact, he was practically begging for it at that point. It was too much. Too many people, places, images flashing in and out of existence, swimming through his mind like a river gone rapid. There were too many voices, too many headaches, too much of everything. When the chalky white pill was placed in his palm it was his salvation. His hands were shaking as it brought it to his lips and swallowed. 

It'd get better. It would get better, the voices would stop, the hallucinations would stop, maybe he'd be a functioning human again.

But it was another six weeks of hell in a stark white lab before it got any better. The first week went by with little to no hallucinations, no voices, no phantom pains, no confusing his identity with whoever was the flavour of the week ancestor they had chosen to survey. It was bliss. He might have smiled once or twice. Maybe even shot a wink to Lucy when Vidic has his back turned. He couldn't remember now but she might have smiled in return.

See, it was all a blur again. Hell came back. They kept giving him the chalky white pill, but the chakly white pill, the thing they sometimes called Paliperidone, sometimes called Invega, had stopped working but left him with the side effects. He couldn't explain things clearly anymore but if he could have he'd say it was like when the ocean recedes before a tsunami. There's those quiet moments of peace, bliss, and you've followed the water as it receded, then you sense something is wrong, and before you have the chance turn and run a fifty foot wall of water is rushing toward you and suddenly you're drowning. 

They increased his dose and then increased his dose again. He couldn't sleep now. It was worse than before. Sometimes he'd be shaking for no reason and his hands would be shoved in his pockets so Lucy wouldn't notice, and he'd plaster on a fake smile just to reassure her that yeah, everything's fine, the dose is fine, I'm fine fine fine. 

He would spend his nights tossing and turning, head pounding, staring at the ceiling and then pacing around the room. He was restless, he couldn't sleep, but the worst part about that was that he was  _tired_. If the machine out there, the Animus, wasn't enough to drive him mad (and it was doing a hell of a job) then the insomnia would. The voices would whisper to him in the dark so he'd turn on the lamp (the lamp that was bolted to the table), wring his hands, and count the hours until it was morning because if it was morning at least that meant he wouldn't have to deal with this hell and wile away the hours, the days (hopefully) as somebody else. At this point, he would gladly overexpose himself to the Animus if it meant he didn't have to deal with the headaches and the voices and the guard that stands stiffly in front of the metal door that had him trapped in here. One night he found himself holding a conversation with the guard until he realized,  _Oh fuck. He's not real_. He spent the rest of that night locked in the washroom, crouched down in the shower with the door shut. Lucy came in the next morning with a coffee, a smile that screamed pity, and another chalky white pill. 

He stared at her, stared at the pill, somehow managed to shakily bring himself to his feet, and with a gut-wrenching anxiety building up, he took the pill from her hand and swallowed. Forty minutes later, he tore himself out the Animus, pitched over, and vomited on the tile floor. There was a snort of derision he assumed came from Vidic because Lucy had her arm around his shoulders, whispering soothing words he couldn't understand because there were too many things going on inside his head. She helped him lean against the side of the Animus and then there was the sound of arguing. Accusations and pleadings, adamant refusals and more accusations. He didn't care what they were aruging about; all he knew was that he needed to focus on the now, not yesterday, not last month and definitely not on three hundred years ago. Time passed, the arguing stopped, and when he was being brought to his feet, his mouth was dry and his head was pounding and his vision was a blur. 

One night, not many nights after that event, but he couldn't be sure, not anymore, he was seated across Vidic's desk, Lucy seated behind it, and he tried to explain to her that it wasn't working, that he had been lying, and  _Lucy, Lucy, please, get me something else I can't do this anymore, Lucy. It hurts. It's getting harder. I can deal with the hallucinations but I can't deal with this._ And he pleaded and begged, but his words came out too quick, too disorganized, the route from his brain to his mouth was broken, his words a jumble. Lucy reached over and took his hand, promised it was going to be okay, told him that she would talk to Vidic about this, and he wrenched his hand back from hers, a loud "No!" leaving his lips and then he was begging her to just go straight to the doctor because Vidic would never agree and _Why won't you just listen to me?!_  The look on her face would have been enough to stop him but a wave of nausea and dizziness hit him first and he gripped the edge of desk, tried to keep himself upright, and would have failed if Lucy wasn't there to take some of his weight. 

He might have heard a sniffle coming from her, she might have been wiping away tears or she might have been wiping away an eyelash, she might have reassured him again it would have been fine, but when she left him in the dark and the door clanged shut behind her, he wasn't sure if any of it was real. 


End file.
